One Astonishing Tale, One Clear Message

A mother bear—confined to a lifetime of abject pain and misery, crammed in a cage with a permanent, gaping hole in her abdomen from which bile is extracted by her thoughtless captors to sell for use in traditional Chinese medicine as a delusional remedy for humans’ liver ailments or sore eyes—sees that in a nearby cage her cub is screaming in agony as a similar, permanent hole is being brutally made in her midsection.Bile is drained from gaping holes in bears' abdomens--World Society for the Protection of Animals

The enraged Momma Bear, summoning strength even she probably hadn’t known was still there, breaks out of her cage and rushes toward her baby. Human “handlers” scurry away in fear. She takes the cub and, in an astonishing act of what I consider sacrifice and compassion, strangles him. Then she kills herself by ramming her head into a wall.

That story was reported this week by, believe it or not, the Chinese media. Did this Momma Bear commit both infanticide and suicide because she believed it was in their mutual best interest to die rather than spend a life of misery in a Chinese bile farm? Did this Momma Bear commit both infanticide and suicide because she had simply gone “mad” from her own time in captivity? Even if Momma Bear’s heroics were exaggerated or her motivations incorrectly inferred, the story does highlight one awful truth:

Bears are being cruelly exploited for dubious human purposes, and as long their bile is in demand—no matter how unnecessarily—they will continue to be caged, violated and have their pain-filled lives casually terminated when the bile’s no longer flowing through the extractors’ tubes.Chinese bear farms warehouse Asiatic black bears in cages so small they can barely move--World Society for the Protection of Animals

Born Free USA is fully engaged in this issue on a number of fronts. We are working with lawmakers, including in the state of New York, on new and existing bear-protection laws. We make our compassionate voices heard, loudly, at Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) conferences. We seek to increase publish awareness of bears’ many human-imposed travails on our website.

Learn more about Born Free USA’s International Wildlife Trade Campaign and what you can do to help.

It’s too late to save Momma Bear and her cub. But together we can make a positive difference for future bear generations and bring out humans’ under-tapped nature of compassion for all living creatures. No bears should be held captive in cruel bile extraction factories. Bears belong in the wild.

Our thanks to Born Free USA for permission to republish this post, which first appeared on their blog on August 12, 2011.